The Postal Service saw its highest career employee complement — 797,795 employees — in 1999. Since that time, through attrition, the complement level has decreased to 583,000 employees (as of Dec. 31, 2010) and delivery points have increased by 17 million nationwide, from 134 million to 151 million in the same timeframe.
That's pretty good, isn't it? Increasing delivery points while reducing employees. Do you think the public realizes this? Any other thoughts on this fact?
10 comments:
I am part of the public, and I didn't know the numbers, but I am eternally grateful to my postal workers!!
We have done an outstanding job of cutting costs in every way possible. However, we cannot cut our way to profitability. We have to continue to press Congress for relief from its back-breaking financial requirement that we prepay 80 years' worth of future retiree health benefits within 10 years and for refunds/reallocations of our $50-$75 Billion overpayment to CSRS and our $7 Billion overpayment to FERS. In the meantime, we must do everything within our power to increase revenues and continue high levels of service.
Efficiency doesn't equate to profits. We need to generate revenue. With the drastic decline in cased volume, only about 10% of the carrier's day is casing mail, the other 90% is overhead (including delivery), which is difficult to reduce. As many others have said, eliminating door to door delivery and centralizing all delivery offers the best opportunity for significant cost savings.
Amen to grannybunny's comments.
Additionally, as a retiree I believe you must advertise the significant numbers you have cited, AND get public support for relief from the pre-funding requirement. Don't ask for the requirement to be eliminated, ask for a 2-3 year delay added on to the end of the required period.
Okay, here's the thing about the requirement of pre-funding of future retirees that bothers me...we have so many fewer employees now, which means fewer future retirees. Why is our pre-funding requirement staying at the same level??? Shouldn't the payments be suspended temporarily to give us some immediate relief, and then re-calculated to reflect the reduction in the workforce?
I don't think we should have to prefund future retiree health benefits at all. Most other entities don't, and none have ever tried to prefund 80 years' worth within 10 years, siphoning away 10% of our revenues and throwing us into a financial loss. We previously funded retiree health benefits on a "pay as you go" basis, with no problem, even when our workforce -- and potential pool of future retirees -- was much larger.
The people we need to educate on these types of numbers is our congressional members. How many of them have said the Postal Service hasn't laid anyone off so they don't want to give us any releif. I am very proud to work for the Postal Service and it is just amazing that we have been able to deliver to 17 million more addresses while lowering our workforce by 25% in just over 10 years.
When postmasters are able to be in their office "managing" their routes instead of going out and delivering them, then I will agree that fewer employees is a good thing. We should set up multiple offices with a shared PTF or TE who works as a T6 type carrier, make all FTR's go to a rotating day off and let the PM's do their job instead of having to work as carriers.
The public doesn't have a clue. After July 2012 we may not have to worry. There may not be a Postal Service. Why don't they cut out the MPOO position? That would save alot of money.
agree... public has no clue.
check out this weeks Bloomberg Businessweek article - talks about the USPS and what needs to be done
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_23/b4231060885070.htm
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